No I'm not, but instead of opening on something that you are clearly clueless on, check our running stats. in the game. Now Yesterday because listening and reading are skills, I'll school ya' a little. Yesterday was ONE game and though I'll add that even Tennessee fans who we've become friends with on this board offered that we should have run the ball more, I'm pointing to the broader scope of things.
Tired of the McCall Criticism--and so is Fitz
- Thread starter YesterdaysCat
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Once again you have drawn the conclusion that a great player makes a great coach. Most times great players are lousy coaches. But, people who struggle to learn something or make something of themselves without great abilities DO make good coaches because they understand that normal people or athletes in this example, just can't turn on a switch and become great. Man you draw the most over glossed inane decisions. No one is going to agree with your thoughts on McCall! McCall stinks and needs to go. Is it all his fault, of course not, but he's lost. Go back and listen to former pro Ed Cunninghams rant about our offensive line during the Michigan game of 2014. Here's a guy who watches a few tapes on us and as a color analyst figures out what our line can and cannot do very fast. McCall is clueless!
One of the good things about this new board is that I believe the threads are saved indefinitely. And I not-so-boldly predict that, within 3 years, our WR corps will be just fine when I revisit this thread, and the usual suspects will have moved on to another position group coach to criticize. In the short time since I've been here I believe that many of the EXACT same reasons in this thread have been brought up in criticism of the RB and DB corps, but in the future there will be proof of that.
No argument. I remember the DB position discussions well. I did not join in.
I do not remember anyone arguing to much about the RB position coach but know the period when this probably did come up. I also did not join in.
I am joining in this time because one of the recurring flaws in the receiving corps is that the players drop balls. A lot. Basically all of the wide receivers.
There is subtlety and talent involved in running good routes. More so in getting open against competition that is as fast as you are. Even more so in winning contested catches. I get the degree of difficulty of all of those things.
BUT, we are talking about catching balls that hit them in the hands. Catches that should be made 90+% of the time. I am guessing that our receivers make those catches maybe 70% of the time. Possibly a little more but not much.
That is basic, coachable, and easy to detect. I believe it is unreasonable to say the players just aren't good enough. That does not stand to reason. To solve the problem, Fitz cannot assume the most obvious potential cause is not on the table because it has the harshest potential consequences. I, of course, have no idea what is going on within the coaching staff and am certainly not qualified to have detailed opinions. But I like to be able to understand things using common sense.
Excuses, every year excuses. Yet, historically, we have taken average recruits and produced studs at WR annually. Carr or McHugh would have been Ross, Peterman, Zeke in the days of old. But back then, we had coaches looking to use the job as a stepping stone. Now, we have loyalty...and garbage.
The coaches are responsible to recruit, develop and plan. OC leads all the offensive skill coaches. This is a coaching failure. Whether they failed in talent assessment, recruiting, developing or game planning, they failed, repeatedly. So let's give them all raises and get ready for next year...
Go back two years ago and you will see exactly the same discussions regarding our sub par WR play. This won't change unless we bring in some help.
Sure, why make him responsible for talent evaluation and recruiting. Players will show up on their own (walk on) and play, right. Micky probably has more important things to do with his time, like find new and creative ways to under-utilize the weapons we have, sabotage potential talent and otherwise offset the progress by the D.
I'm not happy with any of them. Who cares who is happy? Is that where the bar is set? The happiness of Mick and Fitz? Nice accountability.
Well, there's a solution to muting the criticism, which comes justly: FIX THE OFFENSE. IT'S BROKEN.
I generally make it a point not to rag on guys individually, but it's hard to argue with a word in this post.
If the criticism moves on to another position group coach, it will be because the job isn't getting done.
That's what happens. When someone is doing a shitty job, they are going to get criticized. If they do better, then the criticism will stop.
although the RB and DB situations have turned around, there is no guarantee that we will see a similar turnaround at WR. In fact, with DB, you had evidence that Brown could coach and develop top notch backfields. MacPherson? More of a question mark, which he apparently has overcome. With Springer, there is zero evidence that he is gonna be capable of turning things around. If given time, perhaps he can, but I wouldn't retain him based on the body of work and what little confidence I'd have in him to get the job done, since he has flat out failed since being here with no sign of improvement. He has taken what has been a position of great strength, to the utter abyss of underperformance. It has been a terrible performance, and he deserves to lose his job for it if one is objective.
I would argue that there was about as much evidence that MacPherson could "turn things around" than there is for Springer
The previous coach is running one of the most potent offenses in all of college football right now, while we are flirting with dead last. So, there's that. Honestly, if Fitz's stomach hurts because he can't figure out if it's McCall or Springer that needs to go...can them both. The alternative is to hope the "even a broken clock is right twice a day" works out for us sometime soon so Fitz and his blind followers can say "I told you so," as we all settle for a good offense once every 4-5 years.
Yes, and his defense is about as impressive as our defense was when he was here. In other words, they're devoting most of their recruiting to offense, as we did back then. We had some great individual defenders but not a complete lineup and little depth. Indiana is the same way today and they've gone through several defensive assistants since Wilson arrived.
Has MacPherson overcome anything? We recruited Jackson and boom it's all fixed? What about the fact that Anderson has not developed? Maybe Anderson was more raw but equally talented and has needed better coaching.
And what about our shaky pass protection? There's no evidence that it's solved and no evidence that Cushing can do the job.
If our receivers are weapons, I'm not sure the caliber but it's a pop gun. Our best receiver isn't even a receiver; it's the departing Vitale.
You're blowing the lid off a much bigger issue here - it really is the blind leading the blind when it comes to offensive game planning. If we give credit to McCall for a minute and assume he's an excellent game planner...he's got a bunch of dummies staring back at him with no meaningful experience other than what they've amassed in Evanston. O-line, running backs, receivers...Heffner is honestly the only guy who's produced any consistency from his position group. So we're basically looking at a classic case of spreading the blame around just enough for us to all agree there's a huge problem that's no one's fault enough to cut them loose, while we also lack anyone in the room to fix the problem. Great.
I think we're missing an important part of this, which is that we have been lurching back and forth between different positions in recruiting and not really building an all-around solid football team. These kinds of positional gaps are often seen here at NU, as well as at Purdue, Indiana, and lesser schools. They don't have the tradition and pull of an Alabama.
We do, however, have some advantages: geography and academics. We're near Chicago and have the best graduation rates and job placement opportunities in the conference. That appeals to recruits.
What we ought to consider is whether or not it's time to re-examine our admissions standards regarding football. By playing on an uneven field, we are handicapped ourselves and for what purpose? For the right to brag about admissions standards and to have a built-in excuse every time we get exposed like yesterday? Nobody gives a trophy for excuses. We thumb our nose at Duke and ND for loosening their rules and at Stanford for its shotgun recruitments and toying with commits, but they're simply playing by the rules in place. What kind of pleasure do we derive from holding our school back? Sure, we beat those teams in the last two years, but I'm pretty confident that ND and Stanford would not have lost 45-6 to Tennessee, and their lower standards of admission make it that much tougher for us to field a competitive field against our peer institutions in the long run.
I feel as though the big reason for the "incomplete recruitment" of certain positions is our inability to pursue exactly the guys that our coaches would want in the first place. If the coaches get their top choices, then where else can the blame go but toward them when failures occur? As it stands, it seems like the failures can be blamed on shifting too many resources to certain positions due to the tricky recruitment restrictions in place.
I want to share with you that NU had very relaxed admissions standards for football before the 1950s and probably into the 1950s. We were downright cheating in the 1920s and 30s. So it's not as if we would be throwing away 116 years of admissions restrictions here by simply adhering to our conference's admissions standards. The current draconian standards seem to have been instituted in the last 50 years, after Ara and maybe not until after Agase.
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I really do believe that could be happening here and it's depressing. A so-so coach might be propped by a star player who would be successful no matter what. MacPherson has had Sutton and Jackson--two immensely successful H.S. players who performed beautifully right out of the box. Whom else has he developed?
Even Heffner has benefitted from a true frosh who made an impact right away.
It makes you wonder.
You are suggesting that we eliminate the very advantage that we use to actually recruit a team. It's called a near 100% graduation rate and extraordinarily strong job opportunities. I got news for you, the academic admissions are relaxed for football players. A lot. Do you really think the graduation rate would remain what it is if we lower to NCAA minimum? How many knuckleheads are our our team? None that I am aware of. Many of our athletes aren't academically gifted like the typical NU student, but they work hard in an environment that is conducive to being a better person. I want us to win as much as the next guy, but you can count me out if we start to see as many headlines for the police blotter as the football field.
Your post implied that the current criticism of the WR coach is a passing fancy that has been brought about by a couple of bad games. My reply tried to point out that this was not isolated criticism and that we have been having these same conversations for multiple years. This is not just coincidence. We are in a pretty unique situation where it's fairly easy in my mind to isolate what has gone wrong. We went from having highly productive WRs over an extended period of time to having highly unproductive WRs over multiple seasons. One main variable has changed over that period of time. The position coach.
It may, but if the position does ok, then he is going to benefit and escape criticism, because that's just the way it works.
If the position group fails to perform, then the criticism will fall to him. Rightly so. It's his job to make it work. Recruiting and developing players is all a part of it.
The point is that it was bad then and nobody did anything about it, so it's even worse now.
This is total BS. Our admission standards are fine. Do people realize that we have admitted football players with test scores GPA combos as low a 19-20 on the ACT and a GPA of 3.0? Frankly I'd be concerned if we lowered them anymore. Stanford has proven that you can compete at the highest level without completely compromising academic standards.
Wholesale changes are not necessary. I think this is a case of NU football raising the bar and a couple of the coaches not being up to the challenge. This is not just a game as some on this board have argued in the bowl game aftermath. This is a business that generates big time revenue. Coaches don't get paid millions of dollars a year to coach just " a game". Fans don't pay the kind of money they do to follow teams that are playing just a "game". I love NU and Fitz because he is the ultimate competitor who wants badly to win but believes it can be done within the rules and without compromising core values. One of the ways that is done is to preach hard work and accountability. In a program which strives to win championships, players and coaches have to be held accountable for the results on the field. I have heard Fitz preach this multiple times. If he truly believes this, then now is the time to look in the mirror and hold his staff accountable for the lack of results we have seen on the field.
1) Still not how it works in recruiting. You don't "focus on a couple position groups" every year.
2) NU isn't going to be changing its academic standards anytime soon. Besides the administration, Fitz himself believes that they're important to set apart our program.
So if in 3 years our WR's do well, that is OK with you? 6 years of crappy performance with 1 good year gets most people fired in any business.
the stats from college football had out total offense at 111th last year, slightly ahead of michigan who was "114 and purdue which was like #117.
This year, 12 months later, we tipped the charts at #117.
However, as i read the McCall appeals, which primarily were based on the idea that our offense was weighted down due to having a second year QB, I simply broadened the sample to 24 months which sweeps in a NFL QB and compile the offenses of the last two years.
The results of that sample study prove 100% that our offense is the #122 ranked (dead last) over that period.
Fitz has every right to keep McCall on his shoulders but nobody can say it would be worse if we madechanges, cuz there is no such thing as more worst.
will you
I believe Fitz will keep McCall however you may see similar tweaks. Co-Offensive coordinators may be one....dunno....but something will give.
lets not think that the db situation wasnt addressed, as it did not correct itself. Back in the day, JB was exclusively coaching the entire defensive backfield. The productivity was lacking and Fitz did address it, even though mikewebb denies this. Fitz assigned Hankwitz to take a more active role with the DBs, specifically the safeties. Since then....problem solved.
I believe Fitz will keep McCall however you may see similar tweaks. Co-Offensive coordinators may be one....dunno....but something will give.
I'm a graduate of NU and was friends with many football players, as well as baseball players. If you think I don't know all of this, you're mistaken.
The current system is arbitrary in the sense that it is not based on our peer institutions in FBS. It's not based on NU admissions for regular students (which is much, much, much stricter). It's not based on NCAA academic qualifications. I'm saying that we should adhere to the same standards as every Big Ten team at a minimum. We should continue to seek the best and brightest students, but our coaches should not be prevented from recruiting a student whose grades and/or scores are acceptable to every other FBS program except ours.
I'm also not saying that I would give Coach Fitzgerald total discretion. He has to follow NCAA and conference rules. He should receive input and recommendations from admissions because they can evaluate the likelihood of a student's academic success. But, he should not be handicapped by arbitrary, artificial standards that aren't consistent with NU admissions, aren't consistent with FBS peers, and aren't consistent with NCAA rules.
Ultimately, Coach Fitzgerald would be held accountable by the Athletic Director if the program recruits too many poor students. If Coach wants to take more minimum qualifiers, he has to maintain the GSR and APR. His staff will have tough decisions to make, but at least the decisions will be theirs and based on actual NCAA and Big Ten rules that our opponents also follow.
So to summarize, I'm not saying we should drop our pants and take everyone. I'm not saying Fitzgerald should be allowed to do whatever he wants. I'm not saying we should accept lower GSR and APR scores. I'm saying we get rid of the unfair competitive disadvantage that we have created for ourselves, almost as a built-in excuse for losses. We simply follow the rules for our conference and let the staff balance the roster. If the GSR numbers fall, heads roll. If the team fails to reach bowl games, heads roll. Everything is based on real numbers and not built-in excuses about why we can't recruit better players.
Trust me, I know full well. I took classes with guys who struggled but they worked hard and graduated. They were a step up from a minimum qualifier apparently or NU would not have admitted them. They had the luxury of summer classes (and often five years plus those summers), along with the study halls and academic tutoring, to build academic success.
I would say at least 90% of the scholarship football players would not be admitted to NU using the regular admission standard. It's not just a few guys.
1- I'm not saying that the staff decided, 'Hey, let's just go after cornerbacks hard this year' but is it just coincidence that we put a lot of our "athlete" recruits in the defensive backfield? That's really my point. We stacked the depth chart there, intentionally or not... maybe subconsciously?
2- Maybe Coach likes a built-in excuse for why he can't land the same level of talent. The fact is, we have won exactly three Big Ten titles since 1936 and all three were achieved without having to play Ohio State. How many times have we finished ranked in the final AP Poll since 1948? Three times (1995, 96, and 2012) and no Ohio State on the schedule. I'm not afraid of Ohio State and it wasn't those teams' fault that Ohio State was skipped on the schedule, but it's not exactly a coincidence, either.
Give our coaches the opportunity to recruit by the same rules as everyone else in the Big Ten. The only caveat is that they have to maintain the GSR and APR. Good luck with that, but that's the price that I would require and I think it can be done.
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